Developing and maintaining service standards

Developing and Maintaining Service Standards is a video within the 3CO02 Principles of Analytics unit at CIPD Level 3, addressing Assessment Criterion 2.2 on being customer-focused and standards-driven in your own context. The video covers what service standards are, why they matter for consistency and accountability, and how they function as measurable commitments to the people you support. It also addresses the relationship between clearly defined standards and the kind of trust-building that underpins a strong customer-focused ethos within a people function.

The video examines five service dimensions — timeliness, accuracy, accessibility, professionalism, and resolution — and discusses how different customer groups may weight these dimensions differently. It considers what makes a standard well-designed rather than vague, including the balance between stretch and achievability when setting targets, and the role that involving service deliverers plays in both realism and commitment. Concrete examples, such as responding to employee queries within 24 hours or completing reference requests within five working days, are used to illustrate the difference between measurable benchmarks and aspirational but unactionable statements.

The video also covers the ongoing management work that keeps standards meaningful after they are set, including performance monitoring, root-cause investigation when standards are not met, and the kinds of corrective responses available — training, process change, resource adjustment, or individual performance conversations. It addresses the periodic review of standards as customer expectations, organisational priorities, and service capability evolve, and closes by connecting these practices to a practical approach for mapping customer groups, assessing current performance through feedback and complaint patterns, and identifying prioritised improvements within a learner's own people practice context.